Masses of outsiders, seemingly unconcerned about crime, continue to move here, proving Seattle must be a pretty darned attractive, not crime-riddled, place to live.

SPD is frankly rather inefficient at the moment, although it's trying really hard to improve. So better to wait until the department's performance already has improved before adding more bodies as a kind of reward.

And hiring more police officers would mean slicing other basic services.

Harris did say a lot of seemingly reassuring or reasonable things. That public safety is city government's prime responsibility. That all crime is bad but that violent crime is down. And that size doesn't necessarily matter if there is no clear indication of what more officers would accomplish.

And, admittedly, Steinbrueck is the same councilman who called for more cops in the first place. But, even taking Steinbrueck's unhappy reaction to Tuesday's briefing with a large pinch of Morton's salt, I fouhd the rationale for no additional police unsettling. And so would a slew of readers who have e-mailed me since my last column on crime.

Start with this from the October South Precinct Community Newsletter:

Sept. 21: Shots fired from one car at another in area of Rainier Beach Jack-in-the-Box. One dead, one seriously injured.

Sept. 23: One dead from injuries sustained in a fight with domestic-violence abuser as the (subsequently deceased) person tried to help a victim leave an abuser.

Sept. 26: Person shot five times at close range during possible drug deal.

Sept. 28: Suspect shot at a patrol car while officer was inside.

And on and on through the end of the month.

"It's time for Seattle to stop denying that it's a big city and fund a reasonably sized police department," wrote a concerned reader named Sue from Mount Baker. She was the victim of a burglary, committed by four teens in the middle of the day on Sept. 18.

A neighbor saw the theft in progress and called police who didn't show up for an hour -- long after the kids had booked with the stuff.

Sue attended the most recent public hearing at which residents from precincts all over Seattle -- Queen Anne, Leschi, Northgate, Aurora and West Seattle -- begged for more police. I had to wonder what she'd have thought of Tuesday's session.

I heard from several spouses of Seattle police officers, including this message from the wife of a sergeant: "If more people in Seattle had a factual awareness of how few cops are out there, they'd be scared to death," she wrote. "That thin blue line protecting us from chaos is so thin as to be almost transparent."

"The U District is a howling nightmare," another wrote. "Aurora is heating up to be a war zone. And downtown is just plain dangerous."

But you don't have to be the spouse of a police officer to understand that.

"Feeling unsafe and less happy hits the nail on the head," summed up Ann in North Seattle.

While Liz in the Central Area, whose house has been broken into and whose tires have been slashed, said that, after hearing constant gunshots, she's thinking about buying a gun of her own. "I feel like we're living in the wild West or something."

OK. Peter Harris is right when he says performance, not just size, matters. That's precisely why Steinbrueck introduced a policeperformance evaluation measure at a previous meeting.

And, in a column coming to this space soon, I hope to air views of and about the police on that issue.

But, after hearing Tuesday's official song and dance, I tend to agree with the assessment of our mayor by a reader named Bill:

"He's for greenness but not for safety-ness. For staging news conferences, not for citizen confidence. For a tunnel below the viaduct but not above-ground police protection that fits a city this size. The thugs are winning while the condos keep rising."